My companions keep disappearing so I'm usually solo. Level 36 right now and loving everything, just bought my second house in Windhelm and got married. I'm still a little freaked out about the house they gave me but no spoilers

Donut wrote:How do you level alchemy man, I blasted through smithing in an hour, but everything I try for alchemy only makes the bar crawl ugh.

Good question. I remember reading some obscure remark about make a bunch of poisons to level alchemy but I dunno. How many is a "bunch"? It feels the same for me. I can craft 10 or so at a time and the bar hardly seemed to move. I have plenty of potions for healing and I'm not going to bother with the endless +skill potions for crafting so this skill will sadly be hovering around 20.

Has anyone really delved into using poisons? I'm sure at some point they become pretty awesome where a sneaky arrow hit or a backstab will become even more devastating. Seems like out of all my friends, I'm the only one not going for a stealthy play through. My dark brotherhood marks are not going to be subtle at all Seems a witnessed murder nets you a 1k bounty. I can pay that.

Donut wrote:How do you level alchemy man, I blasted through smithing in an hour, but everything I try for alchemy only makes the bar crawl ugh.

Good question. I remember reading some obscure remark about make a bunch of poisons to level alchemy but I dunno. How many is a "bunch"? It feels the same for me. I can craft 10 or so at a time and the bar hardly seemed to move. I have plenty of potions for healing and I'm not going to bother with the endless +skill potions for crafting so this skill will sadly be hovering around 20.

Has anyone really delved into using poisons? I'm sure at some point they become pretty awesome where a sneaky arrow hit or a backstab will become even more devastating. Seems like out of all my friends, I'm the only one not going for a stealthy play through. My dark brotherhood marks are not going to be subtle at all Seems a witnessed murder nets you a 1k bounty. I can pay that.

I don't think I used the stealth skill at all other than in the intro when it suggested you do, just to see how it worked.

A huge orc chick in dragonbone plate, dual wielding and going berserk isn't exactly the height of stealth Most of my friends do also seem to be going the stealth route though. Oh re: bounties, if you kill everyone and I mean EVERYONE who might have seen, you will be informed "Last witness killed, bounty removed." and the bounty will vanish, though you may be left with a lot of bodies >.>

"Definition: Love is making a connection with another person against long odds." "Clarification: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 300 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope."-HK-47WoW Millionaire

I "cheated" and went to the small cave southeast of Whiterun and snuck around behind the blind guy for a while. That boosted my sneak to 100 in a few hours.

Each time you level be sure to stop sneaking, and then travel to Windhelm. There's a pickpocketing trainer there that can train you. Train, pick her pocket to take your money back, rinse and repeat. The bonus of picking her pocket to take the money back (via save scumming obviously) is that you'll skill up each time you lift your money back. When you get sneak to max there's a trainer that can teach you speech up to 50 in Windhelm as well. I used the same strategy with him.

That got the two most odious skills out of the way fairly quickly. It does require a lot of fast travel but at the beginning of the game where money is tight you don't spend a dime (other than the cost of taking a carriage from Whiterun to Windhelm) to level your skills. If you get early access to the thieves guild in Riften and have a high pickpocketing skill, you can steal entire towns blind at night. The thieves guild has a lockpicking trainer as well, you can use the same train/pickpocket combo on him.

It's pretty important to note that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

I can certainly see the appeal of running a stealth character though. Landing a sneak attack with a Legendary Daedric Greatsword is the coolest thing I think I've ever seen. Most of the time you skip the attack and go straight into the execution animation.

Euphoria wrote:that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

Is there anything preventing you from just robbing them a second time to get the rest of it back?

Euphoria wrote:that eventually training becomes ridiculously expensive and this trick doesn't work for your high skills any longer. The max gold I can lift via pickpocketing is around 1,400 (no perks in picking pockets), training my pickpocketing is 1,600 a shot now. It's just a really easy way to get those bonus perks for heavy armor, two-handers, and smithing.

Is there anything preventing you from just robbing them a second time to get the rest of it back?

You steal all the gold they have on them in a single chunk sadly. When training cost outstrips your ability to pickpocket it back you're a little out of luck. Thankfully the amounts you can pickpocket seems to increase with skill level so your cap goes up as you perform the same trick with other skills. I know of at least one perk that directly benefits the ease with which you can pickpocket gold and that would help as well. I'm just not taking that route.

Level 27, also playing as a tank! Most epic moment I've encountered so far is as follows: traveling to Dragoncrater? To, Suprise, kill a dragon!! On my down to find said dragon, I encounter a random cave bear... Out of his cave. So, like any good adventurer would, I proceed to beat him in the face with my mace.

After valiantly defeating the cave bear, and searching its carcass, all of a sudden, my screen is engulfed by a bright orange, moving color. And, low and behold, apparently I pissed off the dragon by killing his pet bear. First thought that came along was "Oh god!", followed by "oh yay!"

So I'm beating this dragon on the head, slowly but surely, when all of a sudden he flys away.... AND ANOTHER ONE COMES ALONG TO AVENGE THE BEARS DEATH!!!!

The epic battle ensues, I chug a few... Potatoes and proceed to kill both dragons with Lydia's help of course, with the quest completed, me texting my girlfriend ferociously "OMG THERE WERE TWO DRAGONS" and it all started with a poor dead bearpet

I decided to keep things simple and overpowered, so I went ahead and crafted/enchanted myself a full set of Glass Armor with total -100% Destruction and -100% Restoration magicka cost bonus.

Now I feel like a Space Marine, stranded on a barbaric feudal planet with nothing but my invulnerable power armor, my super-regenerative abilities, and my trusted master-crafted bolter that has infinite ammo.

Passionario wrote:I decided to keep things simple and overpowered, so I went ahead and crafted/enchanted myself a full set of Glass Armor with total -100% Destruction and -100% Restoration magicka cost bonus.

Now I feel like a Space Marine, stranded on a barbaric feudal planet with nothing but my invulnerable power armor, my super-regenerative abilities, and my trusted master-crafted bolter that has infinite ammo.

+1 Internet

"Definition: Love is making a connection with another person against long odds." "Clarification: Love is making a shot to the knees of a target 300 kilometers away using an Aratech sniper rifle with a tri-light scope."-HK-47WoW Millionaire

I remember in morrowind you could make a spell to debuff yourself minus 100 int for 1 sec. This would lower your maximum magicka to 0, so you were briefly 0/0. Then when it wore off and your normal maximum returned you kept the same %, which it decided was 100% from 0/0! Win! (Or maths fail)

Well, at higher levels you can find potions that restore 100% health or magicka, so that sort of debuff-"abuse" wouldn't be necessary even if it were possible, which I don't know if it is or not. Then again, this far I have seen those aforementioned potions only as loot, never sold by merchants and I haven't really trained alchemy to know if it's possible to make them, so might be that they are pretty rare.

Fivelives wrote:If you DE the archmage's robes, can't you enchant -100% magicka cost to all schools?

I don't think you can disenchant Archmage's Robes, as you can't disenchant most staves and whatnots. Atleast I think you can't, but might be I'm just blind as a bat.

But seeing how this thread started as an "first impressions" thread, and there has really been nothing negative said about the game, I guess I'll be the evil bitch and start with the negative things.While the game is, obviously, pretty darn fun, enjoyable and eyecandy at the best of times, it does have it's drawbacks that make me rage more often than I'd like.

The main problem, that was in Oblivion too, is the ridicilous amount of bugs in the game. (Speaking of PC version here, I don't know about console versions.)Sure, some of the bugs are of the silly kind. Like a Goat riding a Dragon. That's all fun and games, I love that. But I simply can't bring myself to love the game magically shutting down about once an hour or so without any notice of any kind. And the times when the game doesn't magically shut down, you'll encounter enormous amounts of graphical bugs. Like your head disappearing. Or a floor disappearing. Or all the bloody walls in a random house disappearing, leaving only doors, stairs, windows and NPCs visible.

And the list goes on and on. Hell, I think I've seen just about every piece of graphic in the game disappear at one time or another, or turning into what seems to be purple wax molded to look something like the piece of equipment it was supposed to represent when it worked properly. Even the loading screen with the Werewolf in it sometimes has graphical issues, how sad is that? =(

Graphic bugs, sadly, aren't the only kinds of bugs out there. I've seen my screen start to flicker (only in the game itself, so it's not a monitor problem per se) out of the blue, as well as my character suddenly starting to run at thrice or so the normal speed around the world. And no, I did not use a console command or the like to cause that, it just happened. While mighty convinient, it was also annoying as hell.

Well, enough with the bugs. I'm sure you all get the picture. Lots of bugs, annoying as fuck. Moving on.

The biggest issue with the game itself I've had is, for the lack of a better word, recognition.People simply don't recognise me. Not matter what kind of heroic deeds I've done.

To give an example: I could, say, enlist with the Imperials and beat the shit out of Stormcloaks and recieve the prestigous rank of a Legate, yet not a single soul would take a bloody note of that. After beating the War-quests as an Imperial I went to a Stormcloak camp and as it turns out, they didn't know who I was, even though I *Spoiler'd*raided their base at Windhelm*/Spoiler* and did a whole lot of other War-quests around Skyrim. They just told me to go away, well, they did until I killed them all.After that I went to another Stormcloak camp, and those guy hadn't heard of me either. Well, suffice to say they sure have now that I've killed them all, goddamnit.

I'm a Dragonborn that every guard in every city has heard aswell as a Legate and a Thane in all cities aswell as an Archmage and whatnots, yet nobody recognises me. They all think I'm just another bloody shepherd minding my own business or stealing a few trinkets to buy a slice of bread. Even if I'm wearing those valuable and infamous items I recieve when I became a Thane and I have a personal Housecarl running at my heels. The Jarl does, quite clearly, say that the items are recognised by people and even promises to inform the guards that you're no average Joe, yet they never seem to get the message. Nobody ever does.

The best part is, that if you become a Thane in Whiterun, get the Housecarl Lydia and then proceed to do the Stormcloak quests up until the *SPOILER? SPOILER!* part where you raid Whiterun; the new Jarl will offer to make you a Thane of Whiterun and give you a certain Housecarl named Lydia. Though that is after you've had to deliver the subtle message of an Axe to the original Jarl of Whiterun, who coincidentally doesn't even know who you are, even though you're the famous Dragonborn and a Thane of his own damn city. That makes sense, right?*SPOILER END? SPOILER END!*

The guards seem to notice fur coming out of my ears (when you've gotten the ability to turn Werewolf through a quest-line) even if I'm wearing a helmet that completely covers my ears, and the rest of my face for that matter. But they never seem to notice my face nor my fame. How odd, eh?

I could understand the lack of recognition if it was a brand new game from a brand new company, (as they might not have the finances or the time to make all that happen) but it's not. It's a fifth game of an enjoyable series, yet they get such an important, and fairly obvious, thing wrong. It's really sad, imo.

Speaking of Housecarls, they're bloody stupid, as you all have noticed. All companions are stupid, although watching one of your companions get repeatedly bashed in the head by the same trap is quite hilarious. But the hilarity soon dies when you accidentally kill her, again and again and again when she decides to jump right infront of you at the worst possible moment.

Some more control over the companions would definitely be a good thing. Something like DA2 had, a few simple choices for the character's perks, nothing big. And of course the ability to tell the idiot to not jump in your line of fire all that often. Even if it would happen only once in 5 fights would be enough. I'm not all that greedy.

Lastly, the whole Inventory thing is still annoying. I'd love to see a way to categorise items in your invetory by, say, "Newest items first" or books by "Unread books first" and the like. Would make life in Skyrim just that little bit easier. Or at the very least to make the system tell the name of the item you've recieved every time you get one, because currently it doesn't, especially with messages from couries. "Item(s) Added" is the only thing you'll get on some occasions, thenceforth you're forced to look through your Inventory trying to figure out what you just got. Not fun.

All in all, it's a good game, but don't kid yourselves, it certainly has it's issues, especially with the bugs. I hope they'll come around to fix them soon or else I fear the safety of my mental wellbeing, which isn't all that good to begin with - thanks to WoW, heh.

If you're looking to buy the game, I'd recommend to wait a month or all the way to next year so Bethesda could fix most of the bugs by then.

While I agree with your later points (lack of recognition and quite retarded followers) those bugs you mentioned are not universal. I have PC version too and after playing about 90h according to Steam, I've only encountered couple of quest-related glitches that were solved by loading earlier auto-save. My greatest disappointment with Skyrim has been the UI, especially using different weapons, spells and abilities during combat. It's not extremely bad and mods are likely to fix it, but I still wish I could just press one hot-key to switch bow to dual-swords when enemy gets close and later, when my health is low, press another hot-key to dual-cast heal.

EDIT: I was also very sad, when the game decided that 'Thunderfury' was either too cool or too unimaginative name for a sword with Shock enchant and reverted back to the default deadric sword.

While I have encountered some if the glitches mentioned I have crashed out maybe three times in total. I suspect it has more to do with peoples computers than the game as well as none of my friends have had crashing issues and they're all elder scrolls whores. The reason I didn't mention the horrible UI more than in passing is because I'm a pc gamer and its likely to be fixed damn quick once the construction set is released. Don't get me wrong, the UI is disgustingly bad for a pc, but at the same time, bethesda always gives us the tools to fix it how we want.

The only crash I've had with the game so far (I'm at level 29 now, not sure how many hours) is when I spawned 50 dragons at once via the console to see how it performs, and shot one with a bow - the dragons themselves don't crash anything and seem to work normally, but as soon as I attack any of them, the game instantly crashes (FRAPS'ed it, was kinda cool ).

I agree that the inventory and crafting UI is a complete disaster though, and the companion AI is terrible (although mostly in a funny more than frustrating way).

And like I said on the first page or so, it's a dissapointment the game doesn't really use any DX11 eyecandy to make the already awesome graphics even more awesome.

Anyhow, has anyone managed to get a reading from Olava the Feeble?You get a quest for it at some point during the Dark Brotherhood questline (if you complete the kill exactly as it should) but the old hag never gives me any. She just tells me to come back another time, even if I visit her every hour of the day, for a few days in a row.

You didn't accidentally put the token they give you in a chest someplace, did you? Or sell it? :O You need the token they give you in order for her to talk to you. I haven't done the quest but I did recently speak with her to get it.

Actually come to think of it, I'm not sure if you can even put it in a chest. I recall getting a message about not being able to store quest items. I'm stuck with Red Eagle's Fury in my inventory til I go finish that bastard.

Anyhow, double check that you have the token in your inventory. If it is there then I don't have an answer

Aubade wrote:I'm the same way, I did the quest to get the reading, can't remember what she game me for it. lol

Talking to her will lead you to another quest. Without getting too spoilerish, if your playthrough is very stealthy and assassin like, you'll probably want follow through with it as soon as you get it.

And am I the only person here that's playing it on my PS3? The PS3 has a verywelldocumentedmemoryleakissue that makes the game completely unplayable, period. I knew I should've just waited for the GOTY edition before buying it, instead of preordering it and picking it up at the midnight launch. Bethesda does have this habit of releasing games that are bugged to shit and back, after all.

Hell, Fallout: 3 (GOTY edition) and Fallout: New Vegas are still bugged to hell, and both of them like to crash on me. I've got FO3 on the PS3 and FNV on the 360, so it's not exactly platform-specific (like the PS3 memory leak on Skyrim is).

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.